


like wings so wide (blot out the light)

by Flightstorm9



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Administrator Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Blood and Gore, Deity Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Villain Alexis | Quackity, Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), i have brainrot after that lore stream this is so not good for my longfic upload schedule, i mean idk if the torture is that descriptive? but warning for it anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 21:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30145572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightstorm9/pseuds/Flightstorm9
Summary: Quackity stands over him, sickly-yellow wings flared and feathers ragged in the flickering light and marred face deadly, grinning, and he looks like a monster risen from hell. Or some kind of fallen angel, maybe, cast down from heaven.Maybe he's both, Dream thinks deliriously. Maybe he's neither.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Clay | Dream
Comments: 3
Kudos: 85





	like wings so wide (blot out the light)

Every inhale is gritty and dust-filled, choking him with the effort of wheezing through tattered lungs. Something bubbles unpleasantly at the back of his throat, metal and horrible, and he can't help the broken cry that escapes when the axe rams down, every burning agony in his nerves leaping afire again, the drifting haze sharpening into a thousand stabbing shards. He wants to writhe, wants to scream and cry and _fight back_ and not be so... _weak,_ but he's too tired. He's so tired.

A boot slams into his side, there's a feeling like splinters of shrapnel erupting in his gut, and then he's tumbling back and crumpling back against the corner. Everything is fire, pain, falling, and he slips under again.

_it's cold, numb, void and abyss reaching for him and he reaches back-_

He jerks awake at the new pain that rushes through his nerves, screams into the ground as something - his arm? - is wrenched behind his back and _owowowowwhatisthat -_ a new tool, probably, Quackity seemed to enjoy trying those. He shuts his eyes and just goes limp, doesn't bother struggling, it's worse when he struggles. It's worse when he struggles, and his bones are melting and muscle and tissue blister and sear to nothing and he's dying he's dying he _is_

_take me home home home and that's of course where you go-_

The world is blurry, hazy and red-gold tinted - lava or blood or just his faltering eyes, he can't tell. There's something pressing down on his spine, and he can't breath past the shredded remains of his broken ribs and internal organs. He dies bleeding out, all his strength going out and convulsing muscles going slack, and he's gone-

_and when we come before the angels you'll be above of them-_

He wakes up drowning in his own blood, hacking and coughing and throat slit and pooling sticky red that shifts between burning and freezing and not, and all he feels is the faintest sort of sting. Like a papercut, he thinks absently, like the pages of Ranbob's books, cutting him - and then there's footsteps and words talking and then a sharp point digging into the base of his skull-

"Are you going to fucking tell me, or are we gonna have to keep going?"

Quackity stands over him, sickly-yellow wings flared and feathers ragged in the flickering light and marred face deadly, grinning, and he looks like a monster risen from hell. Or some kind of fallen angel, maybe, cast down from heaven. 

Maybe he's both, Dream thinks deliriously. Maybe he's neither.

He would know, though, if he was. He would know if he was among their ranks, and he would not-

He closes his eyes, and the darkness takes him under its wings once more.

_I see the player you mean,_ whispers blue.

The still and quiet is broken by screaming and pain, pain, _pain_ again.

He gasps and trembles, instinctively tries to curl away from the lick of heat and the pulse of power, and there are wings, and there are wings, and there's a grinning face and he knows it's not real but recoils, anyways. An _X_ and an eye that blinks, a mouth in a _D_ that gapes open with no teeth, and he wants to look away but can't. The images overlap, lava and other worlds but then he's on his knees and hurling blood and vomit, and it _hurts-_

Outside it rains and storms and he coughs, specks of red against glittering stone, wolves with fur bristling and howling at a dead moon, an unseen force below the sky and above the abyss unfurling. Red flowering and spreading its poison, influence driving his once-friends mad while he's driven apart by blades and madness and walls that burn.

He could stop it, could temper its growth and squash their strength before it began, but-

 _Save it,_ he says to the earth below, _it's not worth it._

_They're not worth it._

And the world listens.

_The dreamer?_ asks green.

Quackity's back, again, and there is flint-tipped fury that is razor edges all over. Everything here is against him, and he chokes on tears and blood and vomit and dies to the downswing of a pickaxe to the teeth.

He wonders if Quackity is imagining him as Techno, using him as a chance to get out all his pent-up anger.

Who is he kidding, of course he is.

_This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it was hunted, and hunted in return. It dreamed of-_

_-shelter._

He's heard the words a thousand times or more, but it's still nice to hear it again. The pickaxe still hurts, though.

"Give me the book," they say, "and it'll all be over."

 _Will it, though?_ he doesn't say. But he thinks it.

He spits blood at the winged devil, and this time he's expecting the explosion that comes.

_Does it know that I love it? That the universe is ~~kind~~?_

They leave again, and a single crumpled feather remains. It's the color of molten mustard - don't ask him how he knows that, Sapnap had always been a terrible cook - and it's ugly. The feather is ugly.

His wings are ugly, too. The cell is ugly, and Dream is ugly, and eyes-mouths-halos are ugly and he wants it to be over.

_Kind, huh?_

He picks up the feather. His hands smear red onto the yellow creases, and he knows Quackity is no angel or fantasy creature, is just a duck hybrid with a big ego and one eye that doesn't blink anymore, but-

He looks at red-yellow that blurs to orange, and he thinks maybe they told the truth, and Quackity was the phoenix all along.

_Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change._

No, Dream knows. They never do.

 _I know,_ he returns. _I know what we are._

_You don't have to remind me._

Under a sky that is endless blue and belches fire from above there is a thin crust of rock that hides a beating soul, and he feels when it splits in two.

There is below and there is above, but neither harness life and neither breathe like the earth does. Once more with feeling, and then it goes quiet.

_We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you._

_We are all that is._

He shouldn't know if it's day or night - he has no clock, no sundial, no windows and no sunlight or moonlight to go by. He does have Quackity, has the winged silhouette that might be the devil knocking on his door every noon.

But at least the devil knocks.

He wonders if Quackity tells Sapnap and Karl he's going to go get lunch, every noontime, and then comes murder Dream repeatedly over and over and over again for what feels like forever. He wonders if anyone knows, other than Sam, who doesn't care.

He wonders if anyone cares.

_and the universe said I love you-_

_-because you are love._

He dies a final time alone, crawling to the lava and reaching out his hands and feeling every molecule of his palms, then his arms, then his being, burn to ash. He dies without screaming, without blood, without bared teeth.

He dies suffering, and he doesn't come back.

He won't give Quackity that satisfaction.

_And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love._

_You're still a player._

He smiles, despite himself, and reaches out. The void reaches back. It can't smile, but he knows that it would if it could.

_Wake up._

**Author's Note:**

> all End Poem credits go to Julian Gough, the original author! the text was modified in some places, so if you haven't beat the game yourself yet, go and do that now. (or just search it up online lol)
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
